The darkness shall fall
by themytick
Summary: When Talion won the fight against the black hand he took the force of orks he had with him and retreated to Núrn to dominate more of the orcs there and restore the enslaved tribesmen to the warriors they were a short while ago, before their defeat. What if the nation he created still lives at the end of the war of the rings and gondor discovers evidence of their excistense?
1. Chapter 1

The darkness shall fall

TA 2591

"The time has come for a new ring" said Talion as he turned around to the orcs that he had posessed with the help of celebrimbor.

"man the gates you worthless orcs. let none that dont bear the mark of me enter or exit this forsaken land!" yelled Talion

"Are you sure this is wise? we dont have enough uruks here to hold the gate if the enemy comes knocking." said celebrimbor as he appeared out of thin air, looking thoughtful." We could retreat back to the shores of Núrn, consolidate our position there in the fortress of Barad Nurn. There are ample supplies there with what we could support our growing army. We have the trust of the local resistance and you controll all the local warlords."

"Yes but it would be harder for us to take back the black gate if the enemy is fully aware of our existence and that we have a big amount of forces under our controll." retorted talion, defending his position.

"yes but we could starve mordor into submission if we held the shores of Núrn, they wouldnt have enough food to feed their armies and that would lead them into a desperate attack, an attack like that would draw away enough uruks from the coming war effort. We could buy time for the rest of Middle Earth to prepare for the war." Celebrimbor stayed sure of himself.

"all right, well do it your way" surrendered Talion "but if we die again, i am going to destroy a pack of Ghûls and their matron by draining their minds." Was Talions last argument

Talion torned around defeatedly sighing and started yelling at his orcs. " okay uruks, change of plans, we are going to strip the gate of any and all supplies and we are going back to barad Núrn!" Talion yelled so that all his orcs could hear him, then he sat down, took out the dwarven whetstone he found earlier and started sharpening his sword.

hours passed and so it was nightfall before Talion was finally happy with his gear. He stood up and asked "how far have the orcs gotten?"

"The orcs are only a few hours journey away from Barad Núrn, why did you stay behind and didnt go with them?" asked celebrimbor as he appeared behind Talion and walked infront of him." If we want to build up your troops you need to brand uruks one by one or brand their commanders."

"Yes, i know that, remeber what i said about forging a new ring?" Talion could see that he had attracted the intrest of his partner. " Well, i had an idea that we could forge a new ring of power, one that would serve us, and not Sauron." Talion looked at celebrimbor pleadingly." So please tell my that my assumptions are correct, that we can create a ring that would give os power to combat Sauron, even if he regains his ring of power."

"You do not understand what it takes to forge a ring with that kind of power, it takes great evil and malevolence or raw power to make a ring of power, I as a spirit cannot command that amount of power anymore." Celebrimbor admitted sadly, " I cannot give you the power you seek anymore, but i can make you minor rings that have some of the abilities of the other rings. I could make you a ring that turns you invisible to the naked eye, for a short duration of course, a ring with what you could controll the workings of the very nature around you at a very limited scale. All the other types of powers my rings could give you are either not needed or you have the same attribute in spades."

"I could use a ring that turns me invisible, it would be easyer to sneak up on orc captains and warchiefs to brand them. But where will we get the materials, tools and workplaces?" Asked Talion as he started to think the idea more thoroughly trough.

"Correct, if i was still in the smithies of eregion i could do it, but that would require mithril anvils and all the other tools would have to be made of mithril. So no, we cannot make other rings of power, we just have to make do what we have and what we can steal from Sauron."

The two of them had been talking like that for a while and made it to a campsite that was populated by a few uruks. "Well ill let you get to work" said Celebrimbor as he dissapeared.

FA 11

Aragorn was enjoiying a quiet walk with his wife, Arwen , in the garden of kings in Minas Tirith when a messenger wearing the colors of the pircedom of Minas Ithil."I wonder what Faramir wants of me today, is it another reqest of troops to defend his borders from orcs that dont know when to quit fighting, or are the easterlings at it again?" mused Aragorn

"Lets wait and see, he will answer your question in due time my love" said Arwen as she looked at her husband lovingly.

"My liege, I bear urgent news from the men assingned at the black gate" said the messenger after kneeling down before his king.

" Is there trouble brewing there? I thought i had assigned 4 batallions to clear up the area around the black gate?" asked Aragorn, starting to make battle plans to make sure that his and his princedoms borders were safe.

"No, nothing like that." Stammered the messenger because he could see that the king was getting a bit angry.

"Then what is it? Is Faramir asking for men to take all of mordor back to gondor or something like that?" asked Aragorn as he placed his fingers on his temples in order to calm himself.

"Not excacly, some of our patrols captured and interrogated a local warchief and discovered that when sauron took over mordor from the then crumbling Gondor in TA 2951 he was not able to destroy the tribesmen of Núrn. We discovered that the army that you destroyed under the black gate was less that 1/6 of the enemies total army in Mordor. The rest is either guarding and working the surviving industry or... is sieging the tribesmen of Núrn and their so called traitorous orc armies. The tribesmen are being led by a so called gravewalker, a gondorian ranger. Prince faramir wants to use Gondors navy to take as many men we can pull from irrelevant posts and ship them through the river of Poros to the other side of the mountains of shadow. Then they would go to investigate if there really is a remmnant of local gondorian troops." explained the messenger to his king and queen

Both the queen and king stared at eachother, having a silent debate. Finally they seemed to reach a consensus after staring at eachother for atleast half an hour, the messenger was still kneeling infront of the pair, waiting their reply.

"Tell prince Faramir that we agree to provide him with some men and the fleet, and tell him that this is under his full responsability, if the expedition fails it will put him into an extremely bad position in the court and that he will lose alot of the support gondor and Dol Amroth are providing go" said Aragorn as he turned away and lead his wife into their royal bedroom, both requiring some relaxation after making a desiseon that could result in thousainds of men dying.

AN.

this is my second story at (the first i had to take down because i just lost my motivation at the amount of flames i got) and i just had to write it when i had completed Lord of the Rings: Shadow of Mordor. I just had such an urge to write about it, please dont flame me too much or i might loose motivation to write this, updates will be sporradical


	2. Chapter 2

The darkness must fall ch 2

FA 11

City of Ithillien

In a peacefull human city that still showed some signs of the evil that had taken residence in there just scant years before, there was a marvelous hall, filled with pillars and in the center of witch stood a long table with gilded chairs all around it. Prince of Ithillien, Faramir was having quite an annoying talk with his advisor, he wanted him to use the troops he got from Aragorn and prince Imrahil and have a quick war with the Easterlings and black Numenorians of Umbar. They thought that the information the men at the black gate had gained was just false information, leaked by the enemy to lessen the Gondor conefederacys (A.N gondor has multible princedoms that are under its call, so I took the liberty to call them a confederation, if this bothers enough people i can modify it) manpower at the borders. The men had to be pulled from somewhere and Gondor had a big power of manpower because the war of the rings had ended just 11 years ago and they lacked the volounteers and conscripts to refill the ranks of soldiers they had had when the kings last ruled Gondor.

"I am telling you, if you send those soldiers there you will never see them again and they would be wasted, I know and understand your willingness to find remnants of Gondor in the middle of Mordor but this is definetly a trap." Yelled an old obese man in a gilded chair fit for royalty, " I will not stand for this Faramir, when this expedition fails i will make sure it is your head that rolls, and that someone worthy of your position, someone like me would take it!" as he finished his rant he weakly rose up from his chair and paddled out of the council room.

"Do not fret my liege, the expedition will not fail. Hailmo is not stupid enough to sabotage the expeditionary force that we are sending into mordor. He knows that it would be a total waste of men and resources along with what could come if the whole thing is a success." Said Andromir, Faramirs most trusted commander and cousin from his mothers side.

"He is only doing what he thinks is best." was the short reply of prince Faramir, who was sitting on his throne scratching the beard that Eowyn wanted hin to grow," he just doesnt realise the boost that finding this so called kingdom of Nurn would give us. Give him time and he will accept my decision. I just hope he wont do anything stupid until the understanding dawns on him." Understanding that the subject was over and done with, Andromir opened up another one.

"Have the messengers we sent to Umbar to negotiate a peace treaty returned?" asked Andromir sounding conserned.

Faramir just shook his head."No word from them, i am starting to get worried about them. The escort I provided them should have been good enough to protect them from any bandits, orc remmnant forces or any easterling raid groups that still populate the old Gondor highway." as he finished his sentence, one of his personal guards entered from the door and said," sir, the messengers have returned." The man bowed infront of his prince and moved next to one of the pillars in the hall, waiting for Faramir to get going so that he could escort him to the emissaries.

faramir stood up, sighed and said to himself: "no rest for the brave, eh." then he started walking. The guard moved so that he was next to Faramir, sword and shield ready incase of any assassins that could be lurking around.

They marched through the palace, met a few people, exchanged some pleasantries but made it to the gate in less than 10 minutes.

Faramir turned around the last corner before the main gate and took in what he saw, the piles of produce was normal, the stables full of fine rorrhirric horses was normal the cortyard was full of people coming to trade, children playing and adults just chatting. There was a group of horses in the middle of the courtyard with armoured men on the horses, their armour bore the symbol of the white tree. `so few returned, wonder what has happened`.

The men dismounted their horses and started walking towards Faramir with an old grizzled man in their fron, atleast he looked old. Those that knew the guy knew that his name was Polothir, one of the few men that were at the battle of the black gate and survived. He had taken part of many campaings, having taken part at the first, second and third battle of Osgiliath, was one of the fiew that survived at the first level of minas Tirith after the gates had been breached. He and his squad had blocked a courtyard along with the remmnants of his company, as he was the most experienced of the survivors he took up command and set up the defences of the courtyard of the stand, as it is now called, for hours. Because they were not in the enemys way they were mostly left alone, not counting the plundering orc groups that they had to defend themselves against. All in all he was an experienced soldier and commander, second only to Andromir because he was more of a behind the lines tactitian with a gift for seeing enemy strategies and how to counteract them.

"Sir, the diplomatic escort reporting in, sir" called out Polothir as he stood in a gondorian salute, straight backed and a hand on the place where his heart is.

"Where are the diplomatic team and the rest of your soldiers?" Asked Faramir as he answered his captains salute.

Polothir immediattelly looked sad as he answered his prince."The negotiations went sour. the diplomatic team entered the city of Umbar but all that came out were theyr heads that a team of serpent guards brought us, we attacked the betrayers and thats how i lost some of my men. Those damn serpents were well trained."

Faramir started swearing because a piece of his plan just fell off. But no matter he was going to modify the plan so that it could still go on."Damnit, I suppose there is nothing for it now, the waters of Umbar still remain inacessible for us. That means we will have to be more carefull with the troop transports."

AN. I try to update every sunday but like it sometimes happens, life got in the way of that, so ill publish this now.


	3. Chapter 3

The Darkness Shall Fall ch 3

A/N: just to alert you guys, this is just the edited version of the chapter, the ending didnt feel right to me

River of Anduin 15 miles out of Osgiliath

It was a calm day with sun shining, no clouds in sight. That made it an oppurtune day to launch the fleet of transports and escorts. Over 100 troop carrier ships that also carried the supplies necessarry along with 45 escort ships. The water was calm because it was the slow delta of the Anduin. The ships had been launched an hour ago and were making good time towards the western sea where they would sail towards the south till they get to the first major river and then oar upriver on the Thanathor (I dont remember the real name for the river that flows through southern Gondor) river. After they reached the mountains of Mordor they would take the supplies and move trough the naerwith (again made up for storys sake) pass that would lead them to the straight plains that would be several weeks of travel away from Nurn. The sailors had orders to let the men go and then make their way towards their home ports. The soldiers were to accomplish their mission and send a runner through the black gate to Gondor. The road would be easier to cut through by a single light rider.

Command transport "Arcanir"

center of the gondorian convoy fleet

"Arthemir, Fasthemir, get up the mast and signal the rest of the fleet that we are soon going to be exiting the Anduin delta, move it"shouted the decorated admiral of the fleet as he came out of his cabin and buckled up his finely decorated marine armour and took his spear from the doorway to his cabin.

He walked up the stairs to the msailor that was manning the steering wheel and asked him "Everything quiet the last couple of hours? Or were there any problems i should know about?"

The sailor snapped himself fully awake as he was droning off when the admiral came up, "no sir, the most that happened was when a couple of the soldiers we are transporting fell off their transport and had to be fished out before their armour killed them."

"Excelent, only minimal problems then. So no pirate scouts sighted. Good, good, that means we might get through with this withour getting raided." The admiral sighed and made his way to behind the man behind the steering wheel. "son, how old are you? You look barely out of your teens."

The sailor jumped a little of nervousness and answered quickly " 21 sum-mm-mers...sir" the sailor crossed his fingers and hoped the admiral bought it.

The admiral shook his head and stated caringly "you look no more than 16, hell you could even be 15 summers old, but thats not my point. How long have you been at sea and how long have you been behind the steer?" the admiral stood up and placed his hand on the young sailors shoulder "its not that i look down on you because you signed up in the navy and lied to the recruiters about your age, that took guts and a leader needs guts. Especcially at times like these. But if you have little to no experience steering a ship then i will take over and i will send you to your bunk."

The sailor looked a bit relieved and answered the captain in a polite tone "I am 17 years old and i have served three years at sea. Two as a regular sailor and one year as a steerers help."

The old admiral looked surprised and looked at the young man again, "you handle yourself well behind the wheel, dont get us killed and i might teach you some tricks of the trade, as i too started as a sailor." The admiral then walked back to the main deck.

Three weeks later at Brallenuva village near the Thanathor river

The village had not seen any human activity for over 250 years, still the stone structures of the men of Gondor still stood, that made the place perfect for an outpost for the men that were offloaded from the ships. they needed to regroup and they needed some safety for that.

The commander that was leading the group of 1000 soldiers from witch 200 were archers divided his men into two batallions and as they consisted of 10 companies of 100 men each. The companies were going to march in a convoy formation. The supply animals and people servicing the army were at the center and the soldiers were surrounding them. The commanders of armies had long since learned to keep theyr supplies defended as the main force that was guarding south Gondor got cut off from Gondor and killed because the harads launched a surprise attack and burned their supplies.

the men were marching on an old highway, nobody knew who had built it for sure or why but some thought it was an old trading highway between the dwarves of the Broadbeam clan who once had a settelment near here and the elves of Mordor. That would explain the condition of the highway, It was missing only a small percentage of the huge slabs of stone and only a few of them were showing cracks. Most of them had only got a layer of moss on them in places but that was it, no real damage.

The soldiers were marching in formation and the commander leading them was getting nervous, he didnt like mountain passes especially one as unexplored by gondorians as this one. he didnt like it one bit, he had almost zero intel and a very finite amount of men, a situation he was used to. But marching into mordor like this was not a smart idea. The enemy knew the terrain well, they still had alot of soldiers and were breeding more although their main breederies were taken out by the assault force that attacked the black gate and then plundered the surrounding area. Sauron never planned on getting defeated at the black gate so he hadnt built his breederies far from it so he could continnuously pump out troops and drown the west under his orcs and uruks.

Everyone on the outer layers of the formation were carefully looking around, they knew if push came to shove they would be the first to die so they wanted to have as much time as possible to prepare for an enemy charge. The men were nervous for a reason, many a times gondorian troops patrolling the outer edges of gondors territory had been annihalated because they were caught unawares in a valley or canyon.

The troopers marched all day and made camp for the night. Commander Polothir looked around the camp, the troops had camped in a medium sized valley that ended in a dead end. There was a small lake in the middle of the valley that was fed by some small streams coming from the mountains. Polothir had set up his main defences, built from the trees from chopping down the trees that inhabited their camp site earlier, at the mouth of the valleyin a thick wall and some light defences along the side facing their valley. The camp was big enough to house the 1000 soldiers and the people that took care of the small army along with supplie carts and the mounts of the small cavalry group.

He saw a couple of his men behind a barrel and a game of poker(the dice variant) and what looked to be wine. He started walking towards them and when he was just 5 meters from the players one of them saw him and called out "Oy, is that you Polothir you old bastard? Havent seen you since Tirith in 19`". The man was a tall soldier with the regular gondor infantry armor a longbor on his back along with two swords on his hips. The mans name was Drogomir, he was a tad bit crazy. In a good way ofcourse, if it werent he wouldnt be near any weapons, no he hated orcs, and not just regular hatred but enough to throw himself reclessly intoa mass of orcs and fight with his fists when they broke his blades. That was the last Polothir saw of him when they last met, he thought the man was dead and even mourned him for his bravery witch allowed him and the other troopers to get some civillians they were escorting into safety.

"I see you survived that raiding party i last saw you brawling with. I aint even surprised, there were not enough orcs to take down a man as crazy as you. I almost feel sorry for them." stated Polothir as he was trying to recover from the elation of knowing the soldier he had thought dead and whose death he had been blaming himself for was actually alive. "Who are the men you are playing dice with?" asked polothir as he was trying hard not to break out smiling.

"Oh you think those guys had a chance of beating me? Im insulted sarge. oh wait you are a commander now eh?" The man blinked his blue eyes and pushed his longer than regulation hair out of the way of his sight "By the way boys, I need to see the barber so take the old bastard of a commander we have here in my place." Drogomir stood up and started walking towards the camp, probably to get a haircut and so that he wouldnt have to pay out the money he would have lost in a dice throw in a couple of rounds.

"Well i do have to show the younger guys how it was back in our day when we were bored." Said Polothir as he saw Drogomir walking away.


	4. Chapter 4

The darkness shall fall ch 4

A few hours after the game with the soldiers Polothir got back to his command tent with his body more relaxed and his purse a bit heavier. He walked past the two honour guards who were guarding the command tent and saw one of his junior commanders there measuring the map and taking down notes.

"What are you doing here son, shouldnt you be with your men and be resting?" Asked Polothir while keeping his hand on the pommel of his sword. Too many of his fellow commanders had been killed by infiltrators to make this unreasonable so the junior officer took no offence.

The officer saluted his commanding officer and motioned him over, Polothir complied and went to the opposite side of the table."Sir, I am sorry but i took the liberty to dispatch one of my men to scout up ahead the path and they discovered something strange, he found a collumn of dead orcs."

"Weird, i have gotten any reports of any of my forward recon ranger units reporting of taking down an orc caravan in the area, they returned hours ago." Stated Polothir as he looked at the spot the other man was pointing at. "Although if i were to choose an ambush location i would take that spot for sure. See that bend in the valley, perfect for rows of archers to shoot down the first rows, and if the foliage stays the same as it has been the whole trip, then rangers could start quickly picking off the orcs from the back without the others infront of them noticing as they would be concertrated on the frontal attack." Polothir instantly started thinking about cenarios, what could could have attacked the orcs and left them in caravan formation, the foliage is thick but not thick enough to hide enough men to take down an entire caravan. That would leave special forces, sharpshooters that made every arrow count and be synced with eachother to achieve a slaughter as `clean` as that. Polothir quickly stepped out of his tent and said to one of the guards " alert the guards to be extra careful, we have unknown secial operations rangers in the area, and double the guard at all sides."

The guard nodded his consent and ran in the direction of the gates. Polothir returned to his tent and motioned the officer to return to his unit. Polothir layed down on the cot that was in his command thent, the quartermaster wanted to requisition him a proper bed but Polöothir turned it down saying that he was a field commander and that using a bed would make him soft and would not be to the liking of his men.

He drifted off to sleep, luckily a dreamless one because he had no mood for nightmares. Yet as he woke up he thought at first that he was having a nightmare, his tent looked a bit beaten up and he saw his personal guards body slumped in the tent entrance, and fire, a fire was burning in the camp. Polothir immediatelly grabbed his sword, shield and bow with his fathers quiver and ran out of his tent, all the while thanking the valar that he slept in his armour as the first thing he got after exiting his tent was an arrow to the chest where the thickest part of his armour was, he thanked his forefathers in his mind for having the tradition to use the armour of ancient Gondor, before the time that the stewards decreased the density of the standard armour. But still the arrow kicked like a mule and almost knocked him down, he retained his balance and saw what hit him, it was dead, the killer was another orc with its knife in the other orcs back, not a regular one, its eyes were blue and they were glowing. The orc sneered, and ran. Polothir didnt have time to think as his shield took a direct hit from an orc crossbow and caused him to blot towards where there were sounds of fighting, if there was one thing that could pierce his armour it was a crossbow. he ran into a dozen of his men who were having trouble defendinga tent, polothir understood why they were defending it when an orc ran past them with a torch and threw itself into the tent. A huge explosion followed that ripped apart his men, the orc that ran into the tent and some of the attacking orcs. Polothir was knocked down and was buried under some orc corpses. He dug himself ot of the corpses and ran further into the camp all the while slicing up the orcs that he came across, everywhere were corpses of men and orcs, the orcs had a majority of the corpses but he knew that he couldnt take as many casualties as the orcs could, even from his current position he could see the swarm that was climbing over the main wall. He kept running and finally came across another group of his soldiers, there were few of them, too few, but it was all he had, the men numbred 37 in number and were mostly light infantry with some archers and heavy infantry mixed in. "Sir, youre alive, i thought you were lost with the initial assault." the highest officer of the group, a sergeant spoke and looked relaxed, 'must be the stress' thought Polothir and started shouting orders "okay lets get into formation, heavys up front , lighties in the flanks and archers in the middle. Arrow formation!" The men started moving and were in formation within seconds. "Okay, lets move it and help our brothers." He motioned forward to the worst of the fighting and started running in front of his men, a couple of orcs tried to stop him but they were all cut down by either arrows or Polothirs blade.

_***CRASH***_

The men ran into the orcs backs and trampled over many of them with their momentum. Immeadiatelly the wedge mostly broke apart as the soldiers went into singel combat with the orcs who still had their backs turned. Polothir had fought through the main line of orcs and almost got decapitated by one of his own men who was holding the line, or what was left of the line anyway. The only thing that was stopping him was the orcish arrow that suddenly appeared in his face and downed the young looked where the arrows came from and saw a dozen orcs who were firing arrows into the ranks of the men, Polothir pushed his sword into the gut of an orc that was running past him, took the orcs scimitar and threw it into the face of another one who was about to finish off one of his men who was down on the ground. He then took off towards the archers, they were the biggest threat to his men at that moment, he threw his shield into another orcs face and picked up a sword from one of his dead soldiers and immediatelly buried it in the throat of an orc, drew it out and got even more black blood on his armour and face. He thwirled around and used his dual swords to their maximum effect, their sharp blades slicing through four orcs and never getting stuck on their bones, he was like a whirlwind in the orcs rank, taking out orc after orc, dealing death to the monsters, his men gaining hope that they may yet survive the night. And suddenly there was a loud roar and a big creature busted itself through the main gate, stomping on orcs and regulally taking a bite out of one aswell. Polothir had studied his ancient scrolls and knew that that was a graug. Only its eyes were glowing and it was leaving the men unharmed and killed the orcs in drowes.

The only thing Polothir could think at that moment was 'What. The. Fuck'.


	5. Chapter 5

ch 5

Authors note:

Yea i know its been a while, i just have been lazy as fuck and busy with school. On with the story now.

Pearadise: I appreciate the review but im atleast trying, I am trying to make something and as my first creation i expect it to be sub-par to most of the people writing on this site but i gotta start somewhere so could you please atleast review with an account so i could have a mature discussion with you and learn your reasons why you think this story sucks.

FictionGuy-20: Thanks for the review and a good discussion

Leseratte14: Thanks for the review and as i will point out in the authors note i have english as a B language and i really dont know how to get a beta so if someone would volounteer for it id appreciate it.

: Thats way later into the story but they will meet, i think, havent planned too far yet.

The morning after the battle polothir was working along with his me, they needed all the hands they could get on clearing out rubble and looking for more resourses that they could use to trudge on, going back was not an option. Polothir started walking towards where he remembered his tent was, giving a helping hand to some of the men he saw struggling with their tasks on the way. He had less than two hundred men left and most of them were medium infantry, only about two dozen rangers and a dozen archers had survived the battle. The attack on them was largely surrounded in mystery. Nobody knew how the orcs had gotten in that easily. The guards at the walls should have raised the alarm long before the orcs got into the camp. polothir kept moving on, he climbed over the body of the graug that had pretty much turned the battle from a rout to victory, although a phyrric one. The graug had caused enough confusion in the orc ranks that Polothir and his surviving officers managed to reorganize the troops and even burst a couple of pockets where his men were surrounded. After the graug went down something really weird happened, orcs turned on eachother. The ones that started stabbing others in the back were killed of pretty fast but not before taking down even more of the orcs. That confusion in the enemies ranks gave Polothir the chance to push the orcs out of the fort and hold the gate till the morning when the orcs retreated.

Polothir finally made it to his tent and looked his bodyguards dead bodies with sorrow, both of the men had families and this assignment was suppose to be their last on the frontlines, they were suppose to be diverted towards the border of Rohan for regular patrol duty. polothir shook his head and walked into his tent that was by some miracle still standing, he picked up the map of the area off the table, drew his spare swords and took his bagof supplies he always kept packed.

returning from the tent he signaled a couple of the nearby soldiers to him

"Okay, Tarkir, Galveir. See those two men on the ground," he pointed at his bodyguards." I want you two to take their armour and weapons and put them on. They will offer you more protection, i cant afford to lose any more men." He turned his back to the two men as they started undressing the two soldiers. even if its true that he cant afford to lose any more men he did not like plundering the dead, especially his own. He moved on to what was his expeditions food supply of lembas, dried fruit and dried meat, the orcs were so repulsed by the lembas that they just threw a torch in the storage tents and let them burn, now his men were on a mostly lembas diet because lembas is sturdy and doesnt burn easily. The human dried meat and fruit was mostly ruined and all the supplies he had of those were directed towards the wounded who needed the vitamins and energy, mind you, lembas was good but nothing beats meat on helping men who had almost bled out replenish their blood and the fruits kept the injured healthy so that they wouldnt contract a disease because their bodies were too busy dealing with the it was lembas for the uninjured and the ones that didnt suffer anything major. He then remembered why he had went into his old tent in the first place and headed towards the new command tent.

Polothir walked into the new command tent to see his officers and make up a plan. He stepped in and immediatelly all the assembled officers rose up. He had lost a lot of officers but the core of his command was mostly there. He had lieutenant Drogomir, Major Salzimir, lieutenant Halpir, and sargeant Tindir. All of them were experienced and two of them had served with Polothir before, those were Drogomir and Halpir. Both in the Minas Tirith campaing.

polothir put the map on the table and motioned for everyone to take a seat.

"So, Tindir, how is it going with finding survivors from the parts near the gate?" asked Polothir as his opening question.

Tindir sighed and gave his report "Not too good, we found a couple of men who were knocked out or hiding but we only got a dozen or so. Most of them are too shaken to fight anytime soon. Cant say i can blame em'."

Polothir just shook his head. "Me neither, but they need to be in a fighting condition soon or they wont survive, Drogomir, hows the armoury?"

"The orcs werent interested in the armoury so everything but the blasting powder is fully accounted, most of the stuff was blown up in the fire, i think. So armaments are ready and waiting for troops to use them, I doubt we will find much use of empty suits of armour and weapons without men to wield them." Drogomir sighted, none of them could deny how bleak their situation looked.

"My scouts who scouted the area over said they found some dry caves behind some thick bushes, hide most of the spare weapons and armour there, we might have a use for them someday. Halpir, how many trailers do we have left?"

Halpir was the only one who had a positive report it seemed, the people trailing the army, the adventurers, families, whores and servicers didnt suffer too many casualties because they were behind the Gondorian troops when they fought so not many orcs got through.

"well, atleast we have some good news, send a messenger to them and ask how many would like to bolster our troop numbers temporarely, tell them they can keep the weapons and armour we give them. Silzir how are we on supplies?"

A guard left the tent to act as a runner as Silzir started his raport " We have enough food to last until the next summer if we ration the food reasonably. We also have..." '**BOOM**'

Polothir along with every other officer struggled to keep their balance as the ground shook.

Drogomir was the first one to get on his feet and rushed outside. Then came a couple seconds of silence that was cut off by Drogomir "Commander, i think you need to see this."

Polothir walked out with his other officers and saw that the entrance to the small valley they were in was covered by huge rocks

Before he could get a word off a ranger ran towards him, stopped, saluted and gave a raport "Sir, we saw some goblins on the higher spots of the mountain, they were working on something, when we started to shoot them one of them dropped something and then the explosion happened, mustve dragged down half the mountain." The man finished his raport, grabbed his knees and hyperventilated from the running.

Polothir took in a deep breath and answered the ranger "You did good soldier, if that hadnt happened they would probably have toppled the mountain ontop of us when we would leave. Hey Drogomir, i think i know what happened to your missing blasting powder."

**AN:**

**Anyways expect slow updates, or fast ones, dont know when some random thing inspires me to write again. Like today i was walking my dog when i suddenly thought 'hey, i should write a bit tonight'. So still reviews would be appreciated and PMs even more. As im sure i havent told you guys before, my first language is not english, hell my keyboard is russian, but thats because i bought the piece of crap from russia on a school trip.**


End file.
